Love uniting community with pedals

Every Sunday at church, there are greeters who hand you a bulletin, say goodmorning, smile, and chat a little. I felt like a greeter yesterday... or maybe more of a cheerleader...

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Every year, Providence puts on the BridgePedal... a biking event over all the beautiful bridges of downtown Portland. All kinds of people wheel along... from olympic-looking tan men, to toddlers being pulled in buggies behind. Some decorate their helmets with balloons and flowers and fish and little plastic babies... some play music strapped onto the bar...

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Our group started out meeting by the RedCross in a parking lot... got our tshirts and assignments and scattered across the city... waiting for the people to come.

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I didn't really have any idea of what our group's goal was... all I knew is that I was going to be on a hill by Emmanuel's ER enterance, and would stand there... monitoring the course of something...just in case someone fell or something.

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A little while later, an AndyGriffith-type nice cop came and parked in the middle of the street where I was hanging out and started to direct traffic...which was much needed, I found out. I felt like I was his little sidekick... moving the little yellow barriers to the side every now and then... trying to listen as he would perfectly talk with frustrated drivers, and have theme leave with a calmness and directions. He's been patrolling around that area for seventeen years... I was talking with him and said "You probably really have experienced a new depth to life after working around here son long...huh?" "Tiffany..." he replied..."there are a lot of different kinds of people..."

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About six bikers came shooting up the hill... and we didn't see any others until about twenty minutes later...

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Then they came! Packs of fifty or so... a few hundred... thirty... non-stop for hours...

I then discovered what my goal was for that day... and started yelling "WooHOO!!", "GreatJob!!" "You got it!", saying "GoodMorning!", "I'm proud of you!", doing a few cheerleading arm moves... you know... showing we love them...

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Mark and I'd chat with people... have them ring their little bike bells at us... and the time flew by. For a while there, I saw so many bikers coming up that hill...that when I looked at the hospital nearby... it would move too:)

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I also saw a MD of "ours", Johhny!, with a bike shirt with OscarTheGrouch, and talked with him and a family he knows for a few minutes... but I missed seeing my friend Karen... man:)

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All of us saw and felt a lot of love and hope yesterday... praise God:) It was so beautiful...